


don't delete the kisses

by thefudge



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, Henry V - Shakespeare, The King (2019)
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Haunting, M/M, Monarchs in not quite love, nanowrimo: am i a joke to you, ost: wolf alice - don't delete the kisses, shakespeare has left the chat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 03:56:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21349846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: “Kate,” he intones, stubbornly, for she must be English, down to the roots of her silver hair.She sits with her back to him by the fireside, but the lion warmth doesn’t seem to reach her.“Hm?”“Do you like me?” he asks, blunt and soldier-weary.
Relationships: Catherine of Valois/Henry V, Sir John Falstaff/Prince Hal (Shakespeare)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 149





	don't delete the kisses

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. there's a bit of Shakespeare's Henriad in here, but only a tiny bit. The "do you like me" bit and Catherine's confusion, for instance, are his. that and a few other Falstaff-ian moments  
2\. the rest is mostly history, my ignorance, and The King (2019) which!! was really good!! u should watch it  
3\. i got way too invested in this triangle (square?)  
4\. there's another song i listened to while writing this, and while you might not understand the lyrics, it's goshhhhh (the song is about missing someone against your will almost) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAdthtQaoLE (inspo for henry's dancing too)

Catherine’s favorite sport is watching him. Even when he is in another room, even when he is away from court, hunting or hawking with his retinue, her eyes seem to track him, following him, detached from their orbits, a pair of silver moons, silver pine needles, silver forests bathed in moonlight. 

But often enough, she’s in the same room. 

Her prying eyes don’t feel like an intrusion. He almost welcomes them, he who has meandered nameless through grubby streets and misses that nameless skin like a second skin, perhaps his truest skin. She looks freely, takes her fill of him without asking questions, without demanding anything of him, really. She has all the answers she needs, it seems.

Sometimes he feels she does not care for him. All she cares about is watching. 

He understands. Who would care for him in her place? 

It chafes a little because, despite his best efforts to the contrary, he likes her. Her beauty helps a great deal, but there’s something solitary and self-sufficient and even a little _ ugly _about her contained silver self, her hollowed out silver cheeks, something that reminds him of his own loneliness, the loneliness of children in front of a large feast. Silver pine needles scattered to the four winds. 

“Kate,” he intones, stubbornly, for she must be English, down to the roots of her silver hair. 

She sits with her back to him by the fireside, but the lion warmth doesn’t seem to reach her. 

“Hm?”

“Do you like me?” he asks, blunt and soldier-weary.

He can see her bare feet wrapped in wool. She swings her feet. “What is “like me”?”

Henry makes the grimace of a smile. “Come now, you understand. I know you do.”

“Truly, _ non _. Because “like” is so…” and she waves her hand in the air, still with her back, “so broad. So vague. You can like everything, and nothing.”

Henry would like to force her to look upon him, as she is wont to do. He thinks suddenly, _ she can see me even now, has eyes behind her head. _

“I don’t think one can like everything,” he says. “But I like you.”

Even this sounds terse in his mouth, a faithless kind of penitence. He’d like to put more feeling into it, more _ faith _, but the people he loved all died or betrayed him, so it makes no difference in the end, does it? 

Catherine lifts one shoulder. “I thank you. But I think you say so because we are wed and it is easier to think of me as pleasing.” 

Henry runs his thumb against his palm in a peeling motion. “It isn’t easier. It - it would be better if you displeased me.” 

Catherine finally looks at him over her shoulder. Silver pools, pooling silver. She smiles a fraction of a smile. “_ C’est honnête _what you told me.”

He nods. “I said we would be honest with each other.” 

She lowers her eyes. “_ D’accord _ . Then, I don’t _ like _you. I don’t know what I feel for you, if anything. But I will be a good wife.” 

Henry leans against one pillar of her bed, a bed not yet consumed with marital delight. "A good wife," he echoes.

"Yes. Good, not great," she qualifies. "Sadly, we do not make great wives."

He frowns. "You mean French women?"

She smiles. "No. Women."

Henry stifles a crude laugh. He likes her even better with each passing moment. He wants to ask her, _ do you find me plain and coarse? A man who’s sold his farm to buy a crown? _

Instead. 

“Why do you watch me all the time, Kate?”

Catherine swings her bare feet again, almost playful, like a child. 

“I don't."

"You do."

"No."

"Yes."

She sighs. "You...you are not a beautiful man, but you move well. You are ..._ gracieux _. Like a dancer. I always watched dancers at court.” 

Her words, because they are halted by foreign meanings, sound like magic. Henry doesn’t know what to do with his body, leaning against the pillar. He stares down at himself, feels self-conscious and quietly elated. 

“I used to dance before I was king.” When he was Hal. 

Catherine cocks her head to the side. “How? Will you show me?” 

Henry swallows. No, he won’t show her. That would be a frolic of the kind that can only be done with a partner. A beloved partner. He swallows again. 

Catherine bends her head, unfurling her neck, a swan out of hiding. “Please.” 

Her eyes shine silver like a gifted knife. The loss of her interest would be a fatal disappointment. Yet he is a warrior king, that is what they acclaim in the streets. What alchemy could transform him to what he was? 

_ Go on, then _ , a voice in the dark whispers warmly, richly, like goose fat. _ For old times’ sake _.

Henry feels the shiver down his spine, under his small clothes, ticklish, mischievous, plaintive. All mourning is laughing, and all laughing is mourning. 

He could never deny the ghost of sweet Sir John. 

He detaches himself from the pillar in a fluid motion, guided by the shiver, the wave of fetid air, the sweet stink of his old haunts, a brewery of fermenting grain, the ale spilling between his fingers like honey, bathing the rings of power. He flings his arms forward, lets the strings fall loose, he pretends to chase that old boy, to grab him by the scruff of his neck and tell him he’s nothing but a knave, a bastard, a never-do-well. 

He dances. 

In spite of himself, he dances like he once did, writhing, body warped with joy, as if wringing wine from his skin, limbs swimming through the thick air of memory. 

Loose, free. 

He can hear Falstaff laughing, _ mourning _, laughing, clapping, egging him on. 

Until he chances to look down.

Catherine is clapping. She is laughing. Her eyes dance too. 

She is delighted.

Hal’s heart swells and bursts. He does not feel mocked. He does not feel foolish.

In her gaze, the silver is the ghost of another pair of eyes. She is watching him, and through her, his friend watches him too.

He grins, small tears at the corner of his eyes. 

He turns on the spot, crouching like an old man, then pushing his chest out, as if reborn, runs to the bedpost, leaps high against the pillar, snaps his heels, hangs from it, waving his arm as if from the mast of a great ship. 

Catherine claps louder, smiles wider. Her bare feet swing wildly. 

Henry waves from the ship of her bed. 

The queen puts her hand to her lips and kisses her palm, sends these kisses to him, one after the other. 

“_ Bravo _,” she says, and kisses her hand, sends three more kisses to him. 

Hal climbs down from the pillar, runs to her. He grabs both sides of her head and it is still like swimming, it is still the dance that carries him as he kisses her lips and receives the rest of her praise. 

They’ve kissed before in church before his subjects, but it was dry and chaste and sour. It was not a dance. 

She receives his sweat-stained lips like an old friend, as if they’ve been married for years and years, and they will have years and years ahead, won’t they? She kisses him back shyly, by guesswork, but certain she’ll get it right, eventually.

“Open your eyes,” he tells her, midst kisses, as he ghosts his lips over the cut of her jaw. 

Catherine obliges, a little startled.

Henry’s hand cups her cheek. He looks into her eyes. 

He needs her gaze as he kisses her again. 

He needs his old friend. 

He used to sew his friend’s underbelly, used to patch up the suppurating vices, used to close up the pockets of filched gold, used to touch his bare back and find the hurts and laugh at his squirming sighs. _ It stings, Hal. It stings to me mum’s heavenly bum and back. _

Many times he’d put the hurts there. One time, Hal hid behind the trees and watched the Fat Knight ambush a party of good men, only then to jump out of the trees with a mask and a cowl and rob the robber, leaving him crawling in the dirt, howling for justice. How the fat rogue roared! How he cursed him afterwards! They fought beneath the sheets, they held each other as they chewed each other’s ear. 

He remembers the sting of it as he enters his new bride, as if he were the one invaded, as if she were breaking him in. Catherine is only gasping, nails sunk in his arms to keep herself from showing weakness. He slows, goes very slow, until he is not moving at all, inside her. He breathes hot air over her, wants to tell her he will fix her hurt, sew it up, he will make her whole, and he runs his fingers down her perfect skin that has yet to crack and he marvels at it with patience - breast and bone and thigh, all ready to be fried and chewed with a tankard of ale, a fine capon losing its plumage between Sir John's teeth - until his bride clenches her jaw. 

“Please, _ move _,” she grits. 

A smile pulls at his lips. He bends his head and kisses the whiteness of her shoulder, then bites, as the Fat Knight used to do.

Catherine arches against him. Yes, that’s the trick. _ To me mum’s heavenly bum and back. _

  
  
  


Catherine watches him sleep. He is naked in the moonlight. 

From time to time, his lips part heavily and call out a dulcet "_Sir Jo__hn _ _” _ in the night. 

She smiles. Runs her finger down his Roman nose. 

Her king is in love, and not with her, and this makes her strangely happy. There is nothing more alluring than someone else’s love. She could learn to love his love. 

She sidles next to him, whispers to herself, "_ Sir John _”, and feels English. 

  
  


(They don’t have years and years ahead of them. Henry is restless, he must return to France, he must keep it for his son. Her belly is growing round. Catherine is apprehensive. She’d rather swallow back the babe if France is the price. She’d rather not have anything but a husband to keep her warm in this grey, English weather. 

She has come down to the beach for him. He kisses her forehead goodbye, one foot already in the Channel. Her foot was once there too, sea-sick, weary, wet, filled with dread.

He touches her belly. 

“Keep him safe for me,” he says hotly against her cheek. 

“Don’t go,” she says rapidly into his ear, so the others won’t hear. “I told you. You won’t return. I’ve dreamt it. The dream was bad. _ Mauvais _.” 

He cups her cheek, forces her to look at him, _ always _look at him. One part of him suspects she is only trying to dissuade him because she hopes he will forget about her native land. Another part of him hopes something else.

“Do you like me now, Kate?” he asks, like a jaunt. Like a dance. 

Catherine exhales. She chuckles sadly. _ You fool, you lovely fool. _

He kisses her silent lips and leaves. 

He is a speck in the silver sea. Silver pine needles scattering to the winds. 

Years and decades later, as she sits entwined with her Tudor lover in their Welsh bed, she hears him whistling a happy tune in her hair.

Catherine looks up. 

“Do you like it?” he asks. 

“Yes. Oh yes. Please, keep whistling.”

It is not the tune that stirs her. It is the sudden break in the silver sea. 

Before their bed, she sees a graceful ghost, dancing, leaping, swimming. The young man wants to show her how beautiful he can be. She smiles, touches her lips, remembers the sweat-stained kisses. 

_ Do you like me now, Kate? _

“I do. I think I do.”) 


End file.
